Gold (Spandau Ballet song)

Gary Kemp wrote both the music and lyrics; the song was produced by the partnership of Steve Jolley and Tony Swain.

The music video was filmed on location in Carmona, Spain and directed by Brian Duffy. The video features members of Spandau Ballet walking through a desert, down streets and gathering inside various buildings while searching for gold shapes that make up a gold puzzle.

A 'making of' video featured photographs of the band taken by his son, Chris Duffy. The video featured Sadie Frost as a gold-painted nymph, in one of her earlier roles.[1]

Some parts of the music video were also filmed in Leighton House, which was also used in the video for "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers.

The song is Spandau Ballet's second-highest charting single in both the United Kingdom and the United States, behind their previous release, "True",[2] reaching #2 on the UK Singles Chart (KC and the Sunshine Band's "Give It Up" held it off the top of that chart), and reaching #29 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Ian Gittins described the song in The Guardian as a "brash blare of self-belief that appears to be constructed from pure titanium. It may be the least subtle song ever written, but, like Spandau Ballet, it mainlines sheer chutzpah."[3] Lead singer Tony Hadley said, "'Gold' is the song which even today's kids enjoy singing along to in student bars up and down the country, and is one of main reasons I get so many corporate shows. It's requested all the time at awards shows." He said this in 2011 to explain his earnings being higher since the start of the 21st century than they had been in the 1980s.[4]

"Gold" was re-recorded in a semi-acoustic, unplugged-like style for Spandau Ballet's 2009 album Once More.

• 2006: Boytown
• 2007: Paul Harragon (That's Gold)
• 2009: Marcos Rodriguez & Charly F. feat. Jerry Daley (Gold Remix 2010)
• 2012: Basto vs. Spandau Ballet (Gold 2012)

The song has featured in various shows and films:

• As part of the UK radio station Absolute Radio's celebrations for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Christian O'Connell, the network's breakfast show host, pledged to play the song for every gold medal won by Team GB. Spandau Ballet's lead singer Tony Hadley was also invited onto the programme for a live performance of "Gold".[16]
• The song has been used in two advert campaigns for Bold laundry soap, in 2012 with child gymnasts and as of 2019 on TV and radio in parody form with a woman in situations such as a job interview and a proposal, giving a sense of empowerment.
• The song has also been turned into a football chant, with fans of West Ham replacing "gold" with "Joey Cole" or "Carlton Cole", both players who turned out for the team; fans of Celtic also chanted it when Carlton Cole played for them. Irish side Bohemian have adopted it as their club song, replacing the chorus of "gold" with "Bohs".
• "Gold" was used in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City on the fictional in-game radio station "Wave 103".
• The song has appeared in a number of films including Harry Brown and Sing Street, as well as television productions such as Only Fools and Horses, Black Books, and the Australian medical drama Doctor Doctor.[17]